Ronchetti Plan Would Cost More Than $2B, Draining Funding for Schools, Health Care, and Police
A newly released analysis of Mark Ronchetti’s tax plan by New Mexico Voices for Children Action Fund shows the Republican candidate’s budget would cost the state more than $2 billion every year, roughly 25% of the entire state budget.
“It doesn’t take a budget expert to know that this plan can’t and won’t work,” wrote James Jimenez, New Mexico Voices for Children Action Fund Executive Director and former New Mexico Secretary of Finance and Administration in the analysis. “These plans reflect little knowledge of how the state’s most essential services — education, public safety, and health care — are funded. Using one-time revenues to fund permanent tax cuts is unsustainable, misguided, and short-sighted.”
The question the children’s group rightly asks is – given this high cost to the state’s budget, what would Ronchetti cut?
“It’s easy to throw around billion dollar tax plans, but New Mexicans deserve to know what they’d be losing – and a simple analysis shows we’d all be losing a lot if Ronchetti’s wrong-headed budget went forward,” said Daniel Garcia, Communications Director for the New Mexico Democratic Party. “Mark Ronchetti’s reckless budget scheme would mean cuts to New Mexico police, health care and schools. New Mexico cannot afford the draconian budget cuts Ronchetti’s plan would call for.”
Some of the most basic analysis (below) shows that Ronchetti’s extreme agenda would force New Mexico to cut hundreds of millions of dollars from the very services New Mexicans depend on most: including education, health care, and public safety.
The Real Math on Mark Ronchetti’s Budget Plan
By law, the New Mexico state budget has to be balanced. An analysis by former state budget director James Jimenez lays out where the money would need to come from in order to afford Ronchetti’s cuts.
Ronchetti total budget cuts proposed: a minimum $2 billion cut each year
$2 billion from tax cuts and rebates
The state’s general fund is $8.5 billion, so Ronchetti is proposing a cut of nearly 25% of the entire state budget.
Education, health care, and public safety were over 88% of the state budget. So where would Ronchetti cut?:
- Schools, which are about 45% of the general fund ($3.8 billion)
- Health and human services, about 27% of the general fund ($2.3 billion)
- Higher education, about 11% of the general fund ($939 million)
- Public safety, about 6% of general fund ($491 million)
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